Chapter Twenty-One Amelia Reginald

TWENTY-ONE

Telegram sent from Maurice J. Pettigrew, Treasurer of The Collective, to the Board of Directors

Located quarry. Stop.

Was not fishing at all! Stop.

Fled to Wisconsin with human!! Stop.

We made slight detour en route to tour cheese factory roadside billboard advertised as “Best Cheese Curds in Whole Gosh Darn World.” Stop.

Have long been fascinated by cheese. Stop.

How it’s made. Stop.

How and why do cheese curds squeak? Stop.

Want to know science behind it. Stop.

Tour should be quick. Stop.

Once finished, will bring prey to ground. Stop.

Will bring gift from factory shop as apology for delay. Stop.

Amelia

It was strange, being led with my eyes closed through a house I’d been coming to since I was a child. Even stranger when the person doing the leading was a vampire who was humming an out-of-tune rendition of Follow the Yellow Brick Road under his breath as he led me.

“You better not be peeking.” Reggie sounded delighted with himself. “If you open your eyes, you’ll spoil the surprise.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I promise I’m not peeking. Where are you taking me?”

“Just a little farther. Ah. Here we are.” He dropped my wrist and placed his hands on my shoulders. Then he turned me ninety degrees so that I was facing in a different direction. “You can open your eyes now.”

I did.

“You’re kidding me.”

“We’ve already established that I’m not.”

I turned to stare at him. “The game closet?”

“Exactly.” Reggie was beaming. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this was here.”

“I haven’t thought of this game closet in years,” I said, honestly. “It didn’t occur to me you’d be interested.”

His smile slipped. “Why not?” He sounded genuinely affronted. “I love games.” He opened the door, then gestured theatrically for me to go inside. “After you, my lady.”

The mingled scents of old books and unopened closet were nearly enough to distract me from the powerful wave of déjà vu that came over me when I stepped inside. Playing games with my family was part of the fabric of memory whenever I thought of being here. Seeing the stacks of books and games arranged neatly on those shelves made me feel twelve again.

But I hadn’t actually been twelve in more than twenty years. “I don’t think I’ve been in here since college,” I mused.

I turned to face Reggie, and my mouth went dry.

All at once I realized just how small this closet was. Reggie was so tall, and his shoulders so broad, he seemed to take up all the space in the room. Maybe it would feel like that no matter where we were. He was somehow larger than life, larger than even what his own sizable person could contain. There was something about him that displaced every molecule and atom and particle around us until all I could see was him.

He didn’t seem to notice the reaction I was having to being in a confined space with him. He was looking at the shelves of games, eyeing them with an excitement that reminded me of a young child on their birthday.

“What about Settlers of Catan?” He pulled a familiar square box from the top shelf. It was an ancient edition, one my brothers and I had played so many times when we were teenagers that the cards had eventually grown sticky with the snacks we’d eat while playing. He put a hand on my shoulder. I felt our nearness and our isolation, my body thrumming with it in a way I could get lost in, if I let myself.

“I like Settlers,” I said, my voice shaky, trying hard not to think about how good it felt to have his hand resting there. “I’ll warn you, though—I’m competitive.”

“So am I.”

“No, really though,” I said. “I always win. My strategy is foolproof.”

He snorted. “I never took you as one to brag.”

“It’s not bragging if it’s telling the truth.” I grabbed the box, with the idea of taking it from him—but he didn’t let go.

And then we were both holding the box, our fingers nearly touching.

I paused, staring down at the game in our hands. His were so much bigger than mine, his knuckles going a bit white as his grip tightened. Those hands had cradled my face so tenderly when we’d kissed. Somehow, I knew his touch would be gentle everywhere.

All at once, and with the certainty of a thunderclap, I knew that sitting next to him while playing a board game was a terrible idea.

He seemed to reach the same conclusion. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go snowshoeing?” His voice was pitched higher than usual, cracking on the word snowshoeing . “Settlers of Catan is…well. It’s a bit cliché as games go, isn’t it?”

Suddenly, running out into the freezing night sounded like a fabulous idea. There’d be no risk of accidental proximity. No chance we’d inexplicably end up holding hands. Going to my bedroom, alone, and trying to get a few hours of sleep would have been a better decision, but at this point I was collecting bad decisions like Girl Scout badges.

Might as well keep going.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s do it.”

·······

Snowshoeing proved a lot more strenuous than I remembered. Then again, the last time I’d done it had been more than ten years ago, when I was a lot younger and more used to regular physical activity.

This was also the first time I’d ever tried it in the middle of the night with a vampire, which may have also been a factor.

“Am I doing this right?” Reggie had stopped a few yards back, kneeling in the snow to adjust the straps of his snowshoes. While I was bundled up in so many layers I was practically unrecognizable, he wore only a long-sleeved flannel shirt and a pair of blue jeans. “I feel like these aren’t on properly.”

I trudged through the snow to where he stood. It was so bright out there, with the moon and starlight reflecting off the snow, that the headlamps we wore were practically unnecessary. I crouched beside him and rapped once on his snowshoe closest to me. “They look fine to me.”

He let out a frustrated breath. “If I’m wearing them properly, why is snowshoeing so difficult ?”

I laughed. “It just is. Do you want to turn back?”

“No,” he said quickly. “You still have eighty-seven minutes left of the two-hour break you promised me. Let’s soldier on.”

It was always so quiet out there. That was one of the most welcome differences between regular life in Chicago and our visits up here to Wisconsin. It was even quieter now, with the snow blanketing everything and absorbing all sound. The crunching snow beneath our feet and our labored breathing were the only noises disturbing the stillness surrounding us.

Eventually, we came to a wooden shed that my grandfather would use on hunting trips back when he still came up here regularly. “Let’s take a break,” Reggie said. When I made no objection, he pulled me inside of it and closed the door behind us. It was warmer in there, despite it not having any heat or electricity. The broken floorboards suggested no one had been in there for a while.

“I think this is abandoned,” Reggie said, echoing my thoughts. He sat down on the small bench inside the shed and motioned for me to join him. I did, careful to leave some space between our bodies. “If it belonged to someone, I wouldn’t have been able to just walk in.”

Behind the shed, someone had built what looked like a little snow family. Small footprints all around the scene suggested this was the work of some of the kids who lived around here.

“I would have liked to have met the children who made these,” Reggie said suddenly, sounding wistful. “I have a lot in common with kids, you know.”

That surprised me. “Really? How do you mean?”

“We both live without fear,” he explained. “Though it comes from different places. Kids see the world and live each day without fear because they don’t yet know what they have to lose. I see the world and live each day without fear because I know all too well there’s nothing left for me to lose.”

His words were tinged not just with melancholy, but with resignation as well. Gone was the giddy chatterbox who nudged me out the door when he thought I was working too hard. The man who took nothing seriously and seemed willing to try anything as long as it was fun. In his place was a man who seemed both ancient and bone weary.

It was simple reflex, putting my hand on his arm. I was driven by an instinctive need to provide comfort to someone clearly in need of it. He gave no sign that he wanted to talk about what was going through his mind, but before I could talk myself out of it, I went there anyway.

“What triggered this mood?” I asked. “Is it something I said?”

He looked horrified. “What? No ! Of course not.” He shook his head. “I guess I’m just…thinking.” He cleared his throat and shifted beside me on the bench. “Are you sure you want to have this conversation? The whole point of this was to give you a well-deserved break. Not to listen to me be maudlin.”

Even as he said the words, I could see in his changed expression that he wanted to talk about it. “It’s fine,” I said. “You can tell me.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Do you remember the night we met? How I said people were chasing me?”

I thought back to that night. Me, walking out of my building completely distracted and worried about being late for my family’s dinner. Reggie, sprinting down the sidewalk, slamming into me and making me drop everything I’d been carrying. The way he’d asked if I could either pretend to kiss him or pretend to laugh to keep his pursuers from finding him. The way I’d thought, even as it was happening, that the entire encounter must have been some bizarre fever dream.

“Vaguely,” I quipped. “ Were people chasing you?”

“Yes.”

My breath caught. “Who?”

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall of the shed. “The group calls itself The Collective. They’re like…I don’t know. This weird vigilante vampire cult, I guess?”

“A vigilante vampire cult?” A shiver ran down my spine. “Sounds ominous.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Each member can trace themself back through bloodlines to a group of powerful vampires who died at a party over a hundred years ago.” He sighed. “Technically, I can, too. Though that’s the beginning and end of what we have in common.” He looked at me with a familiar gleam in his eye, and it struck me that I must be getting to know him pretty well, because I guessed he was about to deflect with humor a moment before he did it. “I’m a far better dancer than anyone in The Collective, for starters. My parties are better, too.”

I ignored his obvious attempt at distracting me. “If you have the same…vampire ancestors, or whatever, does that mean you’re related?”

“Depends who you ask,” he said, all traces of humor gone again. “I don’t personally think I owe the monsters who took everything from me and made me what I am today anything at all. My… siblings disagree.” He said the word with barely concealed disdain. “Central to their weird vigilante cult thing is reverence for a group called The Founding Eight. Our sires’ sires’ sires, basically.”

“Okay. So…what did you do to make them want to…to vigilante you, or whatever?”

His face shuttered. He looked away from me, at the half circle of snowmen surrounding our little lean-to.

“Like I said earlier, there was a party,” he said, very quietly. “A hundred and fifty years ago, give or take a decade.”

I nearly choked on my tongue. “You’re…” I tried to gather my scattered wits. “You’re one hundred and fifty years old?”

“No.”

“But you just said—”

“I said this party happened one hundred and fifty years ago.” He gave me a sad, sardonic smile. “I was already more than a hundred years old at the time.”

In a rush, I realized that all I really knew about vampires had been the handful of things Reggie had told me and little details I’d gleaned over the years via pop culture. I supposed on some level, I already knew that vampires were immortal. I’d just never had occasion to dwell on it.

Until now.

“Oh,” I said weakly.

“Anyway,” he continued, as if I weren’t having paradigm-shifting realizations on the bench beside him, “there was a fire. Some people died. Other people think I was responsible for it. The Collective definitely does.” He sighed and stared down at his hands. “The Collective never much liked the cut of my jib, so to speak. Ever since their— our —sires died, The Collective has felt like they have a serious stake to grind with me.”

I hesitated before asking my next question. “Reggie— were you responsible for the fire?”

He shook his head. “No. At least, not in the way they think.”

He stood up abruptly, as though he wanted to pace as he spoke. But then he seemed to think better of it when he realized that pacing would entail tromping through feet of snow. He sat down beside me again, looking a bit sheepish.

“There isn’t a lot that can kill a vampire,” he continued. “While most of us are nocturnal, the whole burning up in sunlight thing is a myth. Driving a wooden stake through our hearts would do the job, but that would kill anybody.” He gave me a wry smile. “The only things that will reliably end a vampire’s life are entering somebody’s home without express permission—we explode like a bomb has gone off inside us, very gross—and fire. Let’s just say the night I got on The Collective’s bad side I was figuratively and literally playing with fire.”

The wind chose that moment to pick up dramatically, rattling our shed. The gaps in the old wooden walls let in a rush of frigid air. I shivered, leaning closer to Reggie reflexively.

Slowly—as though he wanted to give me the opportunity to move away from him if his touch was unwelcome—he wrapped an arm around me, pulling me close. I let him do it without allowing myself to think about what it meant. I felt the cold bite of the wind against the cheek that wasn’t pressed against his shoulder but was almost too distracted by the unexpected warmth of his body to notice.

Once we were settled again, he continued his story. “I was not a particularly nice person in the late nineteenth century,” he mused. “I stopped far short of mass murder, of course,” he added hastily, shooting me a sideways glance. “But at the time of the fire, I had a well-deserved reputation as a prankster and an ass. I can understand why some people at that party thought I’d set the place on fire.”

“And why was that?”

His arm tightened around me a little. He looked away. “I can’t say for certain, but it’s probably the signed note I left by the torches out front that said I hate you all and am going to burn this place to the ground. ”

“Are you kidding me?” He didn’t answer. He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Reggie, that was seriously stupid.”

“I am aware.” He started cracking the knuckles of his free hand against his knee. A nervous tic. “But when I wrote that note, I was just being an asshole. I never had any intention of doing anything other than piss people off. How was I supposed to know someone else at the party was going to see that note, take inspiration from it, and think to themselves yes, burning this place down sounds like a spiffing idea ?”

He sounded despondent. If I were a more tactful person, I probably would have been sensitive to that and not asked my next question. But I had to know. “Why exactly did you write that note, Reggie?”

Another sharp gust of wind rattled the shed. “This was over a century before therapy became in vogue, mind you. But I’m pretty sure that if I had been seeing a therapist back then, they would’ve told me I was lashing out because immortality, and everything I lost to become immortal, was more than I could handle.”

My heart clenched. I hadn’t thought about what it must be like to live forever. But now that I was thinking about it, I thought I understood what he meant. Being frozen in time at age thirty-five had some obvious advantages, but how would it feel still being thirty-five, while friends and family continued to age and eventually died?

“Everybody dies in the end,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. His voice was barely above a whisper. “Everybody who isn’t a vampire…they die. Even vampires start to go a bit strange after five hundred years or so.” He looked at the ground. “I’ve done some things I’m not proud of—played a lot of practical jokes, and worse—because…” He trailed off, and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Probably because I was afraid to get too close to anybody. Because getting close to people only leads to eventual pain.”

His words from earlier in the day came rushing back to me. To be perfectly honest, kissing you was probably a mistake on my end, too.

Was this what he’d meant by that?

“So,” I said, trying to make sense of everything he was telling me, “for the past hundred and fifty years or so, you were a jerk to keep people from getting close?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know if you can really describe my behavior in the past tense like that.”

“You haven’t been a jerk to me.”

He gave me a small smile. “I suppose that’s true.” His gaze softened. “I haven’t been tempted to be an asshole to you even once.”

I didn’t know what to do with the look he was giving me. It was too much, too warm. I couldn’t look away. “Does that mean that you don’t like me enough to worry about losing me?”

Even as I said the words, I knew it wasn’t true. An expression I didn’t recognize crossed his face. “No,” he said. He gathered me even closer to him. When I didn’t resist, or move away, he tipped my chin up with a finger so I had to look him in the eyes. “That isn’t what it means at all.”

His face was so close I could all but taste his breathing. Kissing him would have been the easiest thing in the world. Easier than not kissing him, honestly. A slight tilt of my head would have our lips meeting and our worlds crashing together again. He was thinking the same thing I was—I could feel it in my bones, could see it in the dilation of his eyes—but I knew he wouldn’t make the first move again. My earlier admonition against future make-out sessions was clearly at the front of his mind, even as his eyes fell to my mouth.

“It’s pretty out here tonight, isn’t it?” I asked, desperate to break the tension simmering between us. I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. Snuggling out here wasn’t kissing him, after all. This wasn’t going to make me lose sense and want to sleep with him the way kissing him would. This was okay. “Let’s stay out here for a little while longer before heading back inside.”

He sighed. A moment later, his other arm came up to wrap around me, too.

“Of course,” he murmured against the top of my head. “As long as you like.”

Reginald

Amelia must have fallen asleep.

One moment she was commenting on how beautifully the moonlight glinted off the snow in the forest. The next, her breathing had gone all deep and even, her body still and warm in my arms.

I was so entranced by the feel of her, by the fact that she hadn’t so much as flinched when I told her my darkest secret, that it wasn’t until she began shivering that it sank in through my thick skull that it was freezing out there.

A fierce protective surge shot through me like adrenaline.

I needed to get Amelia inside.

I gathered her up, my frozen heart breaking at how light and fragile she was. I could hurt her so easily, I realized. I never would. I cradled her against my chest, wishing my body retained some semblance of a human’s warmth. It was well below freezing outside.

What if I wasn’t enough to protect her from the elements?

She stirred a little when we were halfway to the house. “Don’t,” she murmured, head lolling against my shoulder. Her sleepy breaths were warm puffs of air against my neck. She smelled like everything I had ever wanted. Hades , I wanted to kiss her fully awake. I quickened my pace, hoping she was too sleepy to realize that my earlier struggles with the snowshoes had all been an act to make me seem more human. “I can walk.”

Like I would really put her down before I’d gotten her back home. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to set her down even once we’d gotten back inside. Dangerous , an internal voice was screaming. This will only cause pain, later.

I ignored it.

“You’d been asleep for fifteen minutes before I worked up the courage to do this,” I said. And then, before I could stop my idiot mouth from saying anything else, “You’re so beautiful when you’re sleeping.”

And then, we were at the house.

Then, her bedroom.

I carried her inside without preamble and laid her gently down on her bed. I should have turned and left the room, but I didn’t. I stepped back to look at her, gorgeous and inviting, her beautiful dark blond hair curling in soft waves on her pillow.

If her eyes had been open, she’d have seen it written all over my face just how desperately I was falling for her.

There was another howling gust of wind from outside. It shook the entire house, rattling the windowpanes. The lights flickered but thankfully didn’t go out. The blizzard had apparently decided it wasn’t done fucking with us yet.

Amelia’s eyes flew open. She tugged on my sleeve.

“Stay,” she said, sounding frightened. The wind gusted again, causing the shutters on her bedroom window to creak and the eaves outside to groan. She squeezed her eyes shut again. “It’s embarrassing to admit this, but winter storms terrify me at night. If I’m in my room, and you’re at the other end of the cabin, it’ll feel like I’m truly all alone.” And then, in a much quieter voice, she added, “My bed is big enough for two.”

I could almost feel my mind splitting into two clean halves.

The first wondered, Would it really be so bad to stay with her in here? The bed in this room is large, and if we were wearing all our clothes…what would be the harm?

The rest, in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Frederick’s, threatened to stake me where I stood for even considering this. She was human, and I’d gotten no sign from her that she wanted our arrangement to continue beyond her cousin’s wedding. The potential for this to end in disaster was huge.

When I’d proposed us spending time together tonight, I’d had no ulterior motives beyond hopefully getting her to relax and make her smile.

I tried, frantically, to think this situation through. But then she tugged on my sleeve again, and looked up at me with frightened eyes, and all ability to reason left me.

“Are you sure?” I asked, quietly. I needed her to be sure.

“I don’t want to sleep alone tonight,” she said again. She sounded embarrassed. “I’m just not used to there being so much empty space here. I can’t handle it during a storm.”

“Okay,” I said. “I don’t sleep much at night. But I’d be happy to stay with you tonight. In here. Just, you know. To sleep.” My mind was shorting out. I was babbling. If I could blush, I would definitely have been doing it then. “To keep you safe from the storm, or…whatever. But I’ll admit I’m a bit confused. Earlier tonight you’d said our kissing was a mistake.”

“This wouldn’t be kissing,” she said, very quickly. “It would just be—”

“Sleeping.”

“Exactly.”

I eyed the space on the bed beside her. There was definitely room for both of us, but what if she woke in the night, more frightened of who was sleeping beside her than the storm? Or worse: What if we ended up touching in the night as we shifted in sleep? My stomach filled with a rash of butterflies at the thought. Her head on my chest. Her legs tangled with mine beneath the covers.

No , a voice that again sounded suspiciously like Frederick’s shouted.

“Would you want to create a barrier between us?” I offered, weakly. “With pillows, or something?” I thought I’d seen people do that on a television show, once. I couldn’t remember how it had worked out for them in the end, but it seemed a sound strategy.

“I’m a pretty deep sleeper,” she said. “I don’t think a barrier is necessary.”

Technically, making space for me was easy. But it didn’t matter that the bed was more than large enough for both of us. The minute I lay down beside her—me on top of the blankets, her beneath them—her presence tugged at me like a magnet. The urge to roll over onto my side and look at her was overpowering.

I didn’t fight it.

She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling with an intensity that suggested she may have been trying to avoid giving in to her own temptations. Her profile was bathed in the moonlight coming in between the slats in the window blinds.

Why did someone who was so very obviously off-limits have to be so beautiful?

“Goodnight, Amelia.” I was unbearably nervous, every cell in my body hyperaware of her proximity. She smiled, just a little, and my eyes fell helplessly to her lips. I’d been right, earlier, when I’d said that kissing her had been a mistake. Reaching out to trace the shape of her smile with my fingertips would surely be just as foolish.

“Goodnight,” she said, pulling the covers up to her chin.

It was nearly four in the morning, and I knew she was exhausted. Sure enough, she fell asleep almost instantly.